TORTURE/WAR CRIMES

The CIA’s record of torture is front and center in the media again. This time because President Donald Trump’s new CIA Director, Gina Haspel, played a key role in the agency’s program of “enhanced interrogation” (i.e., torture). Haspel was head of station in at least one of the CIA’s black sites in Thailand where torture took place, and also held multiple senior roles at the CIA Counterterrorism Center, which oversaw the torture program.

She was also involved in the destruction of the video recordings of the torture sessions and was less than forthcoming recently with members of Congress who asked about her role in that action.

Nevertheless, the Senate confirmed her. The fact that Haspel, who played a key role in the CIA torture program, made it through the confirmation process fairly easily, signals, at the very least, that the agency should have no problem continuing to shield itself from any outside scrutiny of its treatment of terror suspects in the years after 9/11.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Back during World War II, the Germans had a brilliant interrogator, Hanns Scharff.

Scharff never indulged in violence of any kind; he used kindness and rewards to gain insight into the British and German prisoners of war he questioned, and frequently brought them out of their prison on day trips for cultural events.

After the war, Scharff was so well thought of, and respected, that the American military invited him to the US to teach his methods to American interrogators.

It is unfortunate that the President and CIA have forgotten (and/or unlearned) that there were other methods, rather than torture, which would give the interrerogator far superior, and actionable, intelligence.

So instead of a Scharff archetype being nominated and confirmed in the position of CIA director, they put a Torquemada archetype in charge instead.

This choice bear ominous witness to what lies ahead for US foreign policy; more and more wars, other than those we cannot seem to be able to win, like Afghanistan and Libya, and ultimately... more torture.

Torture only makes the tortured person say what they believe their torturers want to hear, to get the torture to stop.

And when the US government tortures, or outsources torture, two things happen.

First, the world understands, very clearly, that for all of the political drivel being vomited to the world, about this country's respect for humanitarian values, and the rule of law, when it comes torturing prisoners of war, (which is what these people are), those values and laws get well and truly flushed.

Secondly, when we torture, or outsourcing it, that gives leadership in other countries carte blanche to torture American military members, and American troops.

Please chew on that last one for a while, if you still think torture is a "good idea."

"Let them go to a thousand thousand hells," Steinitz told a local radio station, calling the EU hypocritical, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "The EU is now sucking up to Iran and will help [Tehran] against U.S. sanctions."
Note: That attitude explains a multitude of actions and attitudes. Does Israel have a right to exist? (on Palestinian land)

Canadians subjected to CIA brainwashing experiments at McGill University's Allan Memorial Institute are taking legal action against the federal government, demanding a public apology and compensation. The Survivors Allied Against Government Abuse(SAAGA) group met in Montreal, Canada, on May 20. "The government should offer an apology and there should be recognition of the injustice that was done," said Gina Blasbalg, a patient at the institute in 1960.

As a general rule, when Dick Cheney favors a foreign policy position it’s best to be on the opposite side if you value liberty over war and authoritarianism. The former vice president’s enthusiastic endorsement of not only Gina Haspel as CIA director but of the torture program she oversaw should tell us all we need to know about Haspel.

Saying that Haspel would make a great CIA director, Cheney dismissed concerns over the CIA’s torture program. Asked in a television interview last week about the program, Cheney said, “if it were my call, I’d do it again.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Unfortunately, Dr. Paul, this is precisely what we have become as a country; a country with no concern for human rights, either domestic or foreign; where the quietly corrupt, as is former President Barak Obama, who has been unmasked as having ordered spying on the Trump campaign, gets brilliantly financially rewarded; and where the agendas of the military/industrial complex and the medical/industrial complex must be obeyed, and anyone with peaceful, alternative views will get either literally, or, professionally, assassinated.

I understand this very completely, as that last criminal act, is what happened to my sweetheart Michael, when he asked a very logical question concerning the very strange death of Vincent Foster, during the Clinton years.

The Holocaust did not legitimize Zionism
If international public opinion does not understand that Jews deserved Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in 1933 no less than in 1948, it will infer that Zionism owes its legitimacy to Hitler.

Western support for Israel and the Jewish People based on shame and guilt due to the Holocaust is problematic. It implies that Jews in Israel are owed solidarity due to the wrongs of the past, rather than to their being right in the present.

Living in Berlin, I realize that many Europeans and particularly Germans support Israel more out of collective guilt and shame than genuine conviction. This is dangerous. As soon as these painful feelings ebb - as they inevitably are bound to - so will their support for Israel and Jews. Furthermore this guilt and shame can easily morph into resentment and rage.

(*and , as per typical , he said it in our name .
What the Iranians heard was "Kiss My A** , And Call Me Jack !" , well , at least that's what I take away from everything Our Corporate Boss's Administration has to say , because when these clowns say stuff like this , in a manner that would get one thrown out of a deli for not taking a number and waiting for it to be called , they say it like we're of the same opinion as they , and frankly , Im NOT ! )

Excellent piece covering the last couple of weeks in the Mideast.
Pretty well sums it up! Trump and Putin in Netanyahu's pocket.

The arrival of Benjamin Netanyahu on that day was a heaven-sent gift for Putin. Here was the man who could call upon the US Senate, who can deal with the US President, and now he came in person, Mr World Jewry personified, supporting the Russian narrative of history

Netanyahu repaid his host by a missile strike upon Syria, almost right away. This is a standard Israeli procedure: upon any high-level meeting with the Russians, bomb their allies, so they would know who is more important. They bombed Syria while Russian Defence Minister Shoygu’s jet was still in flight from Moscow to Tel Aviv.
Putin swallowed it, and promised to refrain from supplying S-300 to Syria, despite his Chief of Staff’s words.

Life in Nabi Saleh goes on, but now there's an important event concerning Janna: the trial of Ahed Tamimi. Ahed was arrested by Israeli authorities for slapping a soldier in December 2017 and we have Janna's reaction.

Much of the world condemned the killings in Gaza. Yet the United States, Israel's most important patron, has given it a free hand to do with the Palestinians what it will. Indeed, by moving the embassy to Jerusalem in the first place, Trump sent the implicit message that the U.S. government has given up any pretense of neutrality ... Trump has empowered what's worst in Israel, and as long as he is president, it may be that Israel can kill Palestinians, demolish their homes and appropriate their land with impunity. But some day, Trump will be gone. With hope for a two-state solution nearly dead, current trends suggest that a Jewish minority will come to rule over a largely disenfranchised Muslim majority in all the land under Israel's control.

When they ” shoot at children, they are doing so deliberately, under clear and specific orders.”

What this means is that the Netanyahu government ordered the killing of children. The guidelines adopted by the IDF were approved at the highest levels of the Israeli government.

We are dealing with crimes against humanity and the self-proclaimed “international community” applauds. Western leaders, not to mention the media, are complicit: the consensus is that “Israel has the right to defend itself” …. by killing children.

Through omission, the Western media does not mention the words “Gaza Massacre”. You won’t see it. The Palestinians are described as “terrorists”. The lie become the truth!

Webmaster's Commentary:

When you mame and kill children, you mame and kill the future of that society of which those children were a part; this is one of the many-faceted elements of Israel's "Final Solution" to the "Palestinian Problem".

The United Nations' top human rights body has voted to send a team of international war crimes investigators to probe the deadly shootings of Gaza protesters by Israeli forces.

A resolution calling on the UN Human Rights Council to "urgently dispatch an independent, international commission of inquiry" was backed on Friday by 29 members.

The members - United States and Australia - voted against and 14 abstained.

Investigators must "investigate all alleged violations and abuses ... in the context of the military assaults on large scale civilian protests that began on 30 March 2018", the approved resolution said.

One should ask, “Why are Palestinians protesting?” before cheering for their death in Gaza. Blaming Hamas is a talking point that hides many facts and realities. In the last few days, 85 Palestinians have been shot to death and 2000+ have been shot and wounded — including 200 doctors, paramedics and journalists — by Israeli snipers. Number of Israelis injured: ZERO!...

Israeli officials announced Friday that they will completely refuse all cooperation with the new UN probe into the Nakba Day killings of 61 Palestinian protesters at the Gaza border. The protesters were killed by Israeli troops.

A UN Security Council resolution failed to agree on the probe, when it was vetoed by the United States. The UN Human Rights Council, where no veto power exists, held a special session agreeing to send international investigators into the probe.

It was the deadliest single day in the Gaza Strip since the 2014 Israeli invasion. The incident lead to substantial international outcry. Israeli officials argued that the number of deaths were themselves of no consequence, likening it to killing Nazis.

Donald Trump’s chosen CIA chief claimed the torture tapes she helped destroy showed one detainee’s torture. But she oversaw the torture of a second taped detainee.

It seemed like a small misstatement, the sort anyone makes from time to time, but it might augur much for Gina Haspel’s relationship with the truth as Donald Trump’s potential next CIA director.

All the available evidence, to include declassified CIA documents, indicates that two detainees had their torture at the hands of the CIA recorded on 92 agency videotapes in 2002 at a black site Haspel eventually ran. The vast majority of the tapes showed Abu Zubaydah’s torture. A few showed the torture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, whose waterboarding and other torture occurred under Haspel’s command as chief of base at the Thailand secret prison she ran between October and December 2002.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The choice of Haspel was perfectly logical, on Trump's part.

He is telegraphing perpetual wars, "seasoned" with torture, will be the rule of the day, and the rule of law, and the Geneva Conventions, be damned.

And I would like you to think about this, particularly if you have family in the military.

When this country tortures, or outsources it , there are two results. First, the rest of the world understands that the humanitarian values, this country claims it practices, are practiced in the breach, not in their observance.
Second, when this country tortures, or outsources torture, it gives a country's leadership carte blanche to do precisely the same to American citizens, or our military.

Back in World War II, there was a German interrogator, Hans Scharff, who never, ever used torture:Wikipedia: Hans Scharff

He was lauded for his humanitarian treatment of American and British POWS, and would take them out on day passes for cultural events, and feed them decently. At the end of the war, he was so highly respected by the US government and military, that he was invited to teach his methods at military bases all over the country.

Torture doesn't work, and will only get the tortured person to say what he or she thinks the torturer wants to hear to get the torture to stop, and very rarely produces actionable results. People who torture like to hurt people, because they can, and psychologically "get off" on the process, and know that they will be able to get away with it with impunity.

The fact that he and his advisors chose a Torquemada archetype, as the Director of the CIA, rather than a Scharff archetype, does not bode well for American foreign policy any time soon.

The Arab League called Thursday for an international probe into alleged crimes by Israeli forces against Palestinians following mass protests on the Gaza border that saw dozens of demonstrators killed.

Tens of thousands have protested along Gaza's border with Israel since March 30 calling for Palestinian refugees to be able to return to their homes now inside Israel.

The largest demonstrations coincided with the move of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Monday, which saw Israeli forces kill some 60 Palestinians.

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 10-5 to support Gina Haspel’s nomination today, despite the fact that her facilitation of torture should disqualify her from assuming the role of CIA director.

Next the full Senate will make a final decision on Haspel’s nomination in a vote that is expected to take place next week but could occur as early as tomorrow.

In her testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 9, Haspel insisted that the CIA’s interrogation program during the Bush administration was legal. Haspel, a 33-year CIA veteran, argued that it could not be determined whether torture was effective to gain intelligence. She refused to state categorically that torture is immoral. And she never condemned the torture program in which she participated.

Webmaster's Commentary:

If Haspel wins the nomination of the Senate on this appointment, consider the international rules of law having completely thrown out by the Trump Administration. We will then witness more continuous US-led wars for resources, to which this country has absolutely no moral right, and the return to the draft, both for our young men... and young women.

And with that will come more waterboarding, and more torture, and more abuses both at home and abroad.

JTA — When even Russian policemen had to pass security checks to enter the Sochi Winter Olympics, Rabbi Berel Lazar was waved in without ever showing his ID.

Lazar, a Chabad-affiliated chief rabbi of Russia, was invited to the opening ceremony of the games last month by President Vladimir Putin’s office. But since the event was on Shabbat, Lazar initially declined the invitation, explaining he was prevented from carrying documents, among other religious restrictions.

So Putin ordered his staff to prepare an alternative entrance and security-free route just for the rabbi, according to one of Lazar’s top associates, Rabbi Boruch Gorin.

Putin just loves Israel!
Trump’s moving of Washington’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, an international city, demands universal condemnation.

Not from Russia, notably not after Putin shamefully welcomed Ziofascist Netanyahu as an honored guest in Moscow for the 73rd Great Patriotic War triumph commemoration.

On Monday while Israeli soldiers were massacring Gazans, Russia failed to condemn it – nor Great Friday March of Return Friday mass-killings since March 30, nor moving Washington’s Israeli embassy to Jerusalem.

Palestinians are isolated on their own, struggling valiantly against a ruthless occupier, committing high crimes with impunity because the world community fails to stop them.

Hamas launched in 1988 in Gaza at the time of the first intifada, or uprising, with a charter now infamous for its anti-Semitism and its refusal to accept the existence of the Israeli state. But for more than a decade prior, Israeli authorities actively enabled its rise.

Laila Anwar al-Ghandour, an eight-month-old baby girl, died of tear-gas inhalation at dawn, Gaza's Ministry of Health says, highlighting international outrage over the killings by Israeli soldiers of 60 Palestinians who joined in a massive protest against the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem.

Laila was the youngest fatality of the demonstrations on Monday, which were held in the run up to the 70th anniversary on Tuesday of the Nakba, or Catastrophe, the day the state of Israel was established on May 15, 1948, forcing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.

All the Palestinians, including children, killed in the violence at the Israeli-Gaza border were “terrorists,” Israel’s ambassador to Belgium said. She was called to the foreign ministry shortly after the statement.

Brussels slammed the Israeli envoy to Belgium, Simona Frankel, as she did not mince words in the aftermath of the widely-condemned violence in Gaza, where at least 60 people were killed and more than 2,700 protesters were injured by Israeli fire on Monday.

As funerals were held in Gaza on Tuesday, Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian protesters the previous day was met with nearly universal condemnation and growing international calls for accountability.

On Tuesday, which marked the annual Palestinian commemoration of Nakba Day, two more protesters – identified as Bilal Budeir Hussein al-Ashram, 17, and Naser Ahmad Mahmoud Ghurab, 51 – were killed during renewed but far smaller protests than those held along Gaza’s eastern perimeter on Monday.

More than 40 others were wounded by live fire and seven children, a paramedic and a journalist were among those reported injured, according to the Palestinian human rights group Al Mezan.

Professor and activist, Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, rejoins the program to share with listeners the on the ground reality in Gaza/Palestine. In the backdrop of the U.S. capital move to Jerusalem, the escalation of war with Iran, and the Israeli bombing in Syria, the Palestinian plight has worsened. Over the last few weeks, the bloodshed has significantly increased with over 100 deaths and over 7000 injuries. The hospitals do not have the necessary supplies to care for the injured which will surely raise the death toll. All of the death and injuries occurred against unarmed civilians resulting in major casualties for the Palestinians and zero injuries for the Israelis. Israelis continue to claim self defense as the world wakens to the insanity of those claims.

By David Pear. If you want to know the untold history of the U.S.A., then a good place to start is with the history of US imperialism in Asia from the mid-19th century until today. Not only will that reveal the history of the criminality of US foreign policy, but it will also reveal the true nature of U.S. capitalism, imperialism, fascism and U.S. wars of aggression: past, present and future. For centuries the U.S. has preached that it believes in democracy, freedom and self-determination, but its actions towards other countries speak louder than words. Internationally the U.S. is a predator and a bully. It subjugates small countries, corrupts them by backing right-wing dictators, and enables death squads to commit mass murder of all suspected dissidents. During the First Cold War leftists, anti-colonialists, nationalists and intellectuals were called "communists" and imprisoned, tortured and executed. Now they are called "terrorists". The foreign policy interests of the U.S.

Fifty-nine Palestinian protesters, including seven children under 18, have been killed by Israeli fire during demonstrations on the day of the US embassy's inauguration in Jerusalem, the Palestinian health ministry said Monday.

More than 2,700 protesters have been injured in Gaza on what has been the most violent day of the six week long Great March of Return. Those wounded on Monday include 203 children and 78 women, according to the ministry.

The Palestinian government denounced Monday’s violence as a “terrible massacre” perpetrated “by the forces of the Israeli occupation”, and called for an immediate international intervention to prevent further deaths. A day of national mourning has been declared by the government in Ramallah, to be held Tuesday.

The unambiguous absence of morality in the Israeli government is why Putin’s invitation to the greatest immoralist of them all, Netanyahu, to be an honored guest at the Russian celebration of victory over Germany in WW II has done such damage to Putin’s and Russia’s reputation. Russia fought the genocidal Nazis and now honors with presidential invitations the genocidal Netanyahu whose policy is genocide for the Palestinians. And for Syria. And for Iran.

If a chemical weapons “attack” comes to pass in the place it has been predicted, it would be the first such provocation blamed on Assad to take place in territory occupied by a foreign power, likely triggering an intensified military response from the U.S.
***>>>While Israel seems to have taken it upon itself to militarily intervene in Syria to prevent the Syrian government from continuing to reclaim its lost territory, the other major powers that have long sought the end of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have seemed to step back from intervening in Syria, unless another chemical weapons attack were to take place and be blamed on Assad.

For that reason, a recent article, published in early May by Russian news agency RIA Novosti, should raise concern, as it exposes alleged plans for another gas-attack provocation in Syria. According to the report, preparations for a staged chemical weapons attack began late last month as civilians were relocated to a territory near Jafra oil field in Eastern Syria, where they will participate in a staged filming of a chemical-weapons attack scene. According to South Front, a U.S. military garrison was recently established in this area. The report, based on the testimony of an anonymous member of the Syrian security services, claimed that an attack was being planned by U.S. security services and would employ “prohibited substances” against a group of civilians.

In 1999 NATO used ordnances containing depleted uranium in their bombardment of then-Yugoslavia in a bid to stop the killings of Albanians in Kosovo. According to Serbian data, they resulted in thousands killed and wounded civilians.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has slammed NATO's bombing campaign against then-Yugoslavia using munitions containing depleted uranium during the opening ceremony of the new Oncological Institute. According to him, Serbian doctors determined that such ordnances have severely affected the health of the country's young population.

"Today in the Oncological Institute I learned that more and more children are diagnosed with cancer in our country. I'll be honest, at first I didn't believe in the depleted uranium theories […] but today, after speaking with doctors, I realized that depleted uranium is among many of the factors that cause cancer during a young age," Vucic said.

Thirty-eight Palestinian protesters have been killed by Israeli fire during demonstrations ahead of the US embassy inauguration in Jerusalem, the Palestinian health ministry said Monday.
More than 1,600 protesters have been injured in Gaza so far on what has been the most violent day of the six week long Great March of Return. Those wounded on Monday include 74 children and 23 women, according to the ministry.

The BAE Systems 2018 annual general meeting descended into turmoil after various campaigners representing the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) hijacked the event demanding answers for the liberal use of BAE weapons on schools and hospitals in Yemen

Special Forces GI Livestreams Himself Being Waterboarded and Claims It Is Not Torture in Support of Trump's CIA Nominee
***
Over the weekend, Green Beret Tim Kennedy, a former mixed martial arts fighter, livestreamed the 41-minute footage, which shows him being voluntarily waterboarded and answering questions between sessions. He claimed it proved waterboarding was not torture.

“The reason we are doing this ... is for us to have a conversation. Right now, an amazing hero has been appointed to be director of the CIA and because of that, some of the things she has done are being attacked,” Mr Kennedy said about Ms Haspel.

“If I can change one person’s mind about what torture is and what I would do to protect American freedom, I will do this for years.”

Haspel Says CIA Won’t Torture Again as Ray McGovern Is Dragged Out of Hearing
Likewise Eichmann was probed about his obedience when “ordered to do something blatantly illegal.” In a response that augured Haspel’s Senate testimony a half century later, Eichmann told his interrogators:

“You say illegal. Today I have a very different view of things…But then? I wouldn’t have considered any of those actions illegal… If anyone had asked me about it up until May 8, 1945, the end of the war, I’d have said: This government was elected by a majority of the German people…every civilized country on earth had its diplomatic mission. Who is a little man like me to trouble his head about it? I get orders from my superior and I look neither right nor left. That’s not my job. My job is to obey and comply.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Watching Ray McGovern, a 78 year old peace activist/grandfather, getting stomped on by Capital Police at the Haspel hearings, in such a way that they deliberately injured him, has given me the clearest image of where my alleged government has gone, and that is full-tilt boogie fascistic.

In terms of international relations, particularly in the Middle East, President Trump has become Netanyahu's ventrilloquist dummy, spouting and supporting everything that Netnayahu says, even when such actions are not for the betterment of We the People, but to support Israel's long-term goals in the region. If President Trump were outsourcing US foreign policy, Netanyahu is the last person on earth who should be guiding it, but at the moment he is.

A day before we reached Jerusalem, Israeli forces killed 34 unarmed Palestinians on Gaza border. We decided to interview people in West Jerusalem about those killings.
"Just 34 killed?" Asked one Israeli.
"They should have killed 200. I want them to kill all the Palestinians there," he said
Note: The Israeli occupiers are filthy murderers.

Last month, warplanes belonging to the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen repeatedly bombed a wedding party in the northern part of the country, killing more than 20 people, including the bride, and injuring dozens of others. In the days that followed, local media published a photograph of a bomb fragment with a serial number tying it to the U.S.-based weapons manufacturer Raytheon.
Now the State Department is taking preliminary steps toward a massive, multibillion-dollar sale of similar weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, three congressional aides, a State Department official, and two other people familiar with the sales told The Intercept.

The State Department has yet to announce the exact details and dollar value of the package, but it is said to include tens of thousands of precision-guided munitions from Raytheon, the same company that was involved in producing the weapons used in last month’s strike.

Webmaster's Commentary:

PLEASE, LORD, NO!!!

It feels like the entire American public has been at a "slow frog boil", a situation where the frog doesn't know it is in danger of dying, until it is too late; so it is with the normalization of weapons sales to absolute despots, to create a genocide which the B.O.Y. ( the Butcher of Yemen, AKA the Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman) is doing in Yemen.

I have rarely felt more completely out of control of my government than I do right now, as our alleged government continues to hurtle, at breakneck speed, toward more wars in the Middle East, most probably culminating in a war against Iran, which probably means a war against Russia.

A Northern Irish human rights organization has hit out at claims that a "witch-hunt" is underway against UK armed-forces veterans who served in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1998.

The Pat Finucane Centre, a Derry-based advocacy group, took to Twitter to counter"inaccuracies and blatant lies," published in a Daily Mail 'scoop.' The piece labeled government plans to form a new Historical Investigations Unit (HUI), tasked with investigating unsolved murders during the conflict, as a "betrayal of our soldiers...again!"

But statistics provided by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and originally published by the BBC prove that this is not the case.

The setting up of the HUI was agreed as part of 2014's Stormont House Agreement – overseen by both the Irish and UK governments – and will take over from the now-defunct Historical Enquiries Team (HET), which ran from 2005 to 2014.

Washington has “no position” on what part of Jerusalem should be controlled by Israel or Palestine, the US State Department said, while still calling the city Israel’s “capital” just days before the relocation of the US embassy.

“We are not taking a position on final status [of Jerusalem] issues, including the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, nor on the resolution of contested borders,” the State Department said in a statement on Friday. At the same time, in a seemingly contradictory statement, it added that the relocation of the US diplomatic mission “recognizes the reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and the seat of its government.”
***
The dedication ceremony is scheduled to take place on Monday, May 14, the statement confirmed. The event will be attended by US Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, as well as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Senior Adviser Jared Kushner and adviser Ivanka Trump.

At the beginning of the month (May 2018) the British Ministry of Defence seemingly on accident revealed for the first time that they are unloading horrifyingly inhumane, thermobaric weapons out of drones onto the people of Syria: and it wasn’t even in this recent April 2018 escalation of tension, but last year. They are doing it more often than they’d like to admit.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arbitrarily detained according to the UN for almost 8 years. Now Ecuador has expanded that arbitrary detainment to solitary confinement by forbidding Assange from any human contact including visitations, phone calls and barring his Internet usage. All without Assange ever being convicted of a crime besides publishing documents exposing corruption shedding light on the truth...

Enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding that were used on terror suspects following the September 11, 2001 attacks would still be used today if it were up to former US Vice President Dick Cheney, he said in an interview on Thursday.

"If it were my call I would not discontinue those programs; I’d have them active and ready to go and I’d go back and study them and learn," Cheney told Fox Business News. "If it were my call, I’d do it again."

A retired CIA analyst, having served his country for nearly 30 years, was forcefully removed from a Senate hearing for simply exposing and demanding answers related to torture engaged in by someone who will likely be tasked with serving America.

Instead of facing a judge to defend herself against prosecution for violating U.S. law prohibiting torture, 33-year CIA veteran Gina Haspel on Wednesday faced the Senate Intelligence Committee in a hearing to confirm her as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Haspel does not look like someone who would be associated with torture. Instead she would not be out of place as your next door neighbor or as a kindly grade-school teacher. “I think you will find me to be a typical middle-class American,” she said in her opening statement.

Former CIA analyst and anti-war activist Ray McGovern was forcibly removed from the US Senate hearing where Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump’s nominee for CIA director, was answering questions about her record on torture.

McGovern was dragged from the room by Capitol Police after demanding that Haspel answer questions put to her about the waterboarding of terror suspects at a CIA “black site” in Thailand.

It all started when Senator Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island), asked Haspel about the morality of “enhanced interrogation techniques” (TORTURE) and how she would react if one of her own CIA officers were tortured by terrorists. Would she consider a CIA officer being waterboarded by “terrorists” to be immoral?

“Sorry to interrupt here,” McGovern lambasted as he stood up in the audience..

President Donald Trump's CIA nominee said Wednesday at her confirmation hearing that she doesn't believe torture works and that her "strong moral compass" would prevent her from carrying out any presidential order she found objectionable.

Under questioning by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, acting CIA Director Gina Haspel said she would not permit the spy agency to restart the kind of harsh detention and interrogation program it ran at black sites after Sept. 11. It was one of the darkest chapters of the CIA's history and tainted America's image worldwide.

Senators asked how she would respond if Trump — who has said he supports harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding and "a hell of a lot worse" — ordered her to do something she found morally objectionable.

"I would not allow CIA to undertake activity that I thought was immoral, even if it was technically legal," said Haspel, a 33-year veteran of the agency. "I would absolutely not permit it."

Former CIA analyst and anti-war activist Ray McGovern was forcibly removed from the US Senate hearing where Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump’s nominee for CIA director, was answering questions about her record on torture.

McGovern was dragged from the room by Capitol Police after demanding that Haspel answer questions put to her about the waterboarding of terror suspects at a CIA “black site” in Thailand.

While her nomination has already revived the country’s unresolved debate over interrogation methods that many experts consider torture, nearly everything Haspel has done in her long CIA career has remained secret, blotted out by the black ink that obscures classified information in public records.

But a trove of partially declassified CIA documents, released earlier this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and provided to ProPublica, offers a glimpse at one coercive interrogation she is known to have supervised.

Those records describe how Nashiri was slammed repeatedly against a wall, locked up in a tiny “confinement box” and told (inaccurately) that the black-clad security officers guarding him were Navy sailors who would pummel him if he did not divulge his secrets. One interrogator told Nashiri he needed to be “tenderized” like a piece of meat.

The article below is a reminder that George Soros pushed through the Iran nuclear deal much to the consternation of Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump came to his rescue. Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015, just as Iran was being finalized. The only reason Americans got an alternative to Clinton was due to this schism in World Jewry between Communists and Zionists. The Communists, led by George Soros, and fronted by Obama and Clinton, represent the disintegration of the nation-state, including Israel. The nationalists led by Netanyahu and fronted by Trump represents a handful of powerful nation-states dominated by Israel. This is a disagreement between Masonic lodges. In Trump, Americans are getting the crumbs from Israel's table.

Those who cry wolf over the deal and want to attack Iran are only following the diktats of the Israeli terrorist-in-chief Benjamin Netanyahu. After all, he’s their god and whatever he says goes – that’s the only explanation for their idiotic stand. Watch this video of Netanyahu lambasting Iran in the US Congress, or not – after all, who can stand to watch that demonic and arrogant cad ordering the US around.

Consequently, when the Middle East is set ablaze and millions of people lose their lives, the world will know who to haul at The Hague for crimes against humanity.

CIA records on Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump's nominee to be the intelligence agency's next director, will not be made public, Senator Richard Burr, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Tuesday.

Burr's committee will conduct on Wednesday a confirmation hearing for Haspel, the former deputy director of the CIA now serving as acting director. Ahead of the hearing, some Democrats have called for the release of more information about Haspel's record at the CIA, including any possible links to interrogation practices denounced as torture.

I wonder how many people, not just Americans but those in other countries, have come to the conclusion that the United States today is a less free and less aware society than the societies in the dystopian novels of the 20th century or in movies such as The Matrix and V for Vendetta. Just as people in the dystopian novels had no idea of their real situation, few Americans do either.

What are we to make of the extraordinary war crimes committed by the United States in the 21st century that have destroyed in whole or part seven countries, resulting in millions of dead, maimed, orphaned, and displaced peoples? Consider, for example, the latest Washington war crime, the illegal attack on Syria. Instead of protesting this illegality, the American media egged it on, cheering impending death and destruction.

JERUSALEM/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian state media accused Israel of launching missiles at a target near Damascus on Tuesday, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he was quitting the Iranian nuclear deal, a move that had prompted Israel to go on high alert.

The Israeli military said that, upon identifying “irregular activity” by Iranian forces in Syria, it instructed civic authorities on the Golan Heights to ready bomb shelters, deployed new defenses and mobilized some reservist forces.

Israel’s top general, Gadi Eizenkott, canceled a scheduled appearance at an annual security conference and was conferring with Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman and other national security chiefs, officials said.

Trump’s hard tack against the nuclear deal, while welcomed by Israel, has stirred fears of a possible regional flare-up.

President Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel to lead the C.I.A. has revived debate over the agency’s post-Sept. 11 interrogation program and still-murky questions about her involvement. Now, on the eve of her Senate confirmation hearing, a striking voice is trying to join that fray: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

Mr. Mohammed, the principal architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was captured in March 2003 and tortured by the C.I.A. This week, he asked a military judge at Guantánamo Bay for permission to share six paragraphs of information about Ms. Haspel with the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Ms. Haspel ran a black-site prison in Thailand where another high-level detainee was tortured in late 2002. But it is not known whether she was involved, directly or indirectly, in Mr. Mohammed’s torture. Mr. Mohammed was held in secret C.I.A. prisons in Afghanistan and Pola

When Gina Haspel was nominated as the next head of the CIA in March, it re-opened debate on a murky period of recent US history - the use of secretive overseas prisons to torture terror suspects. As the BBC's South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head reports, the spotlight has fallen on Thailand, and one such "black site" which Haspel once ran.

In early April 2002, a plane took off from an undisclosed air base in Pakistan, en route to Thailand. On board was a special passenger.

Abu Zubaydah, a 31-year-old Saudi-born Palestinian, believed to be one of Osama Bin Laden's top lieutenants, had been captured a few days earlier in a joint US-Pakistani raid on Al Qaeda safe houses in Faisalabad.

He was now in the hands of CIA agents, who had decided to make him the first "high-value detainee" to be subjected to what they called "enhanced interrogation techniques" - something human rights groups say amounts to torture.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders has been slammed for claiming Democrats who support women’s empowerment should also support Gina Haspel’s nomination to the CIA, despite her record in torture.

Sanders said “any Democrat who claims to support women’s empowerment and our national security but opposes her nomination is a total hypocrite” in a tweet on Saturday, sparking a swift backlash across social media.

US President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, Gina Haspel, tried to withdraw in order to avoid a fiery debate at a hearing on her role in the agency’s notorious torture scandal.

Several unidentified senior US officials told The Washington Post that Haspel was worried that the increasing scrutiny over her role in the agency's interrogation program would tarnish her reputation and that of the CIA, the newspaper reported on Sunday.

President Trump is stepping up to defend Gina Haspel, his nominee to lead the CIA following Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's exit, after reports surfaced that she offered to withdraw her nomination during a meeting at the White House over the weekend.

Blaming Democrats for obstructing Haspel's nomination because she was "too tough on terrorists", Trump insisted that his pick is the "most qualified person, a woman, who Democrats want OUT because she is too tough on terror" before ending his tweet with "Win Gina!"

US President Donald Trump took to Twitter Monday to defend his nominee for the CIA directorship, Gina Haspel. Trump argued that Haspel was “too tough on terrorists” for the Democrats.
"My highly respected nominee for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, has come under fire because she was too tough on Terrorists,” Trump tweeted. “Think of that, in these very dangerous times, we have the most qualified person, a woman, who Democrats want OUT because she is too tough on terror. Win Gina!"

The manner in which protesters, including children, have been injured – live ammunition fired at the groin, neck, limbs, and abdomen – suggests that Israeli troops intentionally aim to inflict maximum physical harm on the civilian participants in the marches
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In response to a High Court petition by human rights advocates, authorities in Tel Aviv noted that “the state opposes the applying of human rights law during an armed conflict,” arguing that even the Red Cross deemed human rights law inapplicable during wartime.

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(*F.Y.I.: Israel is at war with unarmed protestors . No wonder they need the biggest allocation of U.S. foreign aid)

Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 - 14 March 1883), was a 19th century Jewish political ideologue who presented himself to the world as a journalist and economist. He is best known for subverting the nascent Socialist movement, likely as an agent of his cousin Rothschild; and on instructions from his mentor Moses Hess, creating a supposedly "scientific" theory known as Marxism.

Marx came from a long line of Jewish rabbis. He lived in Dean Street, London in squalor. He used to visit the Red Lion Pub at Great Windmill Street, Soho where he and Friedrich Engels were asked to write what became the Communist Manifesto. His best known work is the book Das Kapital, which fails to mention that money is printed out of thin air and by his cousins, the Rothschilds.

As IDF braces for sixth Friday March of Return protests on the trot, expected numbers dwindle, but Israel's southern residents edgy about Palestinians' increased use of incendiary kites—a new primitive weapon that has so far eluded the IDF’s high tech capabilities; rioters manage to intercept two IDF surveillance drones using slingshots after UAVs are used to cut wires, take down incendiary kites.

Medics on the ground say Israeli forces are shooting at demonstrators with a new type of round - never seen before - known as the "butterfly bullet", which explodes upon impact, pulverizing tissue, arteries and bone, while causing severe internal injuries.

All 24 amputees were shot with a single explosive bullet, including journalists Yaser Murtaja and Ahmad Abu Hussein who succumbed to their wounds after being shot in the abdomen.

Obama’s super-progressive administration refused to re-open the investigation in the government murders of students carried out on the campuses of Kent State and Jackson State.

The evidence is crystal clear that the shooting were not “accidental.” The order to shoot was given on the scene and given that the commanders were never investigated or charged, the only possible assumption is their orders came from higher up.

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As a comment on this incident, I stress that it constitutes a turning point in the situation of the region. What follows will be very different from what preceded it. This is an incident that cannot be considered lightly contrary to what happens with many incidents here. It is a turning point, a historic turning point. And when the Israelis committed this stupid act, they had some assessment (of the situation), but I tell them that their evaluation is false. And even in the future, since you have opened a new path in the confrontation, (you should ensure) not to be wrong in your evaluations. In this new path you opened and initiated, don't be wrong in your assessment,when you are face to face, and directly (in conflict) with the Islamic Republic of Iran.>>>

In mid April some 20+ of Sudanese soldiers were killed in an ambush in northern Yemen. Sudan, which sent up to 10,000 soldiers to Yemen in hope of Saudi money, is reconsidering its engagement. The Gulf states had promised investments in Sudan and the lifting of U.S. sanction in exchange for sending cannon fodder. Neither happened.

U.S. military involvement in Yemen's civil war appears to be larger than originally thought.

A team of about a dozen Army Green Berets was sent to the country's border with Saudi Arabia in December, to aid the Saudi-led forces in their fight against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, according to the New York Times.

Yemen has been in political disarray since 2015, when the Iranian-backed Houthis overthrew the president and took control of most of the western part of the country, including the capital, Sana'a.

Since then, a Saudi-led coalition has been locked in conflict with the rebels, as they work to reinstate President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

According to U.S. officials and European diplomats interviewed by the Times, Army Green Berets have been aiding the Saudis in locating and destroying caches of ballistic missiles and launch sites that the Houthis have been using to attack Riyadh and other Saudi cities.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Translation: the US government and military are neck deep in the war crimes Saudi Arabia is perpetuating in Yemen.

This is a genocide, complete with the wanton killing of infants, children, women, and the elderly medically fragile, and it gets worse; now cholera (possibly weaponised) is spreading in Yemen, and the medical infrastructure desperately needed has, of course, been destroyed by the Saudis and their American counterparts.

The Saudis, again with American military assistance, have also blocked major Yemeni ports, meaning no food can get in, meaning horrendous deaths through starvation/ malnutrition are occuring in Yemen.

I frankly am profoundly uncomfortable being a citizen of a country whose leadership has absolutely zero moral issues with assisting other countries in the commmission of war crimes; unfortunately, Mike and I are too old, and too broke, to become citizens of more civilized countries which do not engage in these practices.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday that the Syrian witnesses to the alleged chemical attack in Douma who gave their accounts at The Hague days ago were put under pressure from journalists.

This comes as a BBC reporter ridiculously claimed that a 12-year-old Syrian witness sustained “psychological trauma”.

Lawrence Davidson examines the Trump administration’s latest folly: colluding with the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs to fund and man what amounts to a mercenary army led by Christian fundamentalist Erik Prince to replace the US troops in Syria. >>

Brain scans conducted on the man accused of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks show damage consistent with abuse he might have suffered in CIA custody, his lawyers reveal in a war court memo obtained by McClatchy. If proven, the development could make it less likely that he would face the death penalty.

Lawyers for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, 53, who revealed the terror suspect's brain damage in a memo to be raised at pretrial hearings this week, are seeking more sophisticated studies.

While the CIA has said that it is “committed to transparency,” it has so far only granted senators — and not the public — access to some classified information about Haspel. Last week, the CIA disclosed a 2011 memo — written by a former CIA official with a record of excusing torture — which supposedly cleared Haspel of responsibility for the destruction of evidence documenting the brutal torture of a man in CIA custody in 2002. But the CIA shouldn’t get to cherry-pick which documents it will declassify — while hiding the most important torture records.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has also pushed back against the agency’s handling of Haspel’s nomination and requested a copy of a special prosecutor’s report that addressed the destruction of evidence of torture.

UPDATE: On the morning of September 21st Phil Giraldi was fired over the phone by The American Conservative, where he had been a regular contributor for fourteen years. He was told that “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars” was unacceptable. The TAC management and board appear to have forgotten that the magazine was launched with an article by founder Pat Buchanan entitled “Whose War?” which largely made the same claims that Giraldi made about the Jewish push for another war, in that case with Iraq. Buchanan was vilified and denounced as an anti-Semite by many of the same people who are now similarly attacking Giraldi.

Pompeo said the US is committed to “rolling back to the full range of Iranian malign influence in Syria,” specifically mentioning “Iran’s missile systems, its support for Hezbollah, its importation of thousands of Shiite fighters into Syria.” Pompeo added, “We strongly support Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself.”

DEBKAfile: This was taken as a US green light for Israel to take on the elements threatening its security from Syria. The secretary also stressed that the US would continue to fight ISIS and not tolerate the Assad regime using chemical weapons.

Israel’s right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, is pushing for a new law to punish those who document the Israeli soldiers activities during their army service, Israeli Channel 7 reported.

The draft law calls for anyone who films soldiers during their military service to be handed a -year jail term which would increase to ten years if the content is classified as “detrimental to Israeli security”.

The bill also prohibits the publication of video recordings on social media or disseminating them to the media.

Why Did the U.S. and Its Allies Bomb Libya? Corruption Case Against Sarkozy Sheds New Light on Ousting of Gaddafi.
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Last month, French police detained and questioned Sarkozy about illicit payments Gaddafi is said to have made to Sarkozy’s 2007 presidential election campaign. A few days after Sarkozy was released from detention, he was ordered to stand trial for corruption and influence-peddling in a related case, in which he had sought information on the Gaddafi inquiry from an appeals court judge. The scandal has highlighted a little-appreciated bind that Sarkozy faced in the run-up to the Libyan intervention: The French president, who took the lead among Europeans in the military campaign against Gaddafi, was eager to compensate for diplomatic blunders in Tunisia and Egypt and most likely angry about an arms deal with Gaddafi that went awry. Sarkozy, it now appears, was eager to shift the narrative to put himself at the forefront of a pro-democracy, anti-Gaddafi intervention .

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) spokesperson Rupert Colville denounced Israeli forces’ use of lethal force against Palestinians participating in the recent protests in Gaza, speaking from Geneva on Friday.

“It is difficult to see how tyre-burning or stone-throwing, or even Molotov-cocktails thrown from a significant distance at heavily protected security forces in defensive positions, can be seen to constitute such threat,” said Colville.

“In the context of an occupation such as Gaza, killings resulting from the unlawful use of force may also constitute wilful killings which are a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” he added.

No Attack, No Victims, No Chem Weapons: Douma Witnesses Speak at OPCW Briefing at The Hague

Witnesses of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, including 11-year-old Hassan Diab and hospital staff, told reporters at The Hague that the White Helmets video used as a pretext for a US-led strike on Syria was, in fact, staged.

“We were at the basement and we heard people shouting that we needed to go to a hospital. We went through a tunnel. At the hospital they started pouring cold water on me,” the boy told the press conference, gathered by Russia’s mission at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.

Hassan was among the “victims” seen being washed by water hoses in a video released by the controversial White Helmets>>>

The Inhibitor!
However, the Russian army observed the shots and transmitted the coordinates of the Allied missiles to the Syrian Arab Army in real time, in order to allow the Syrians to destroy them. Besides this, when the Syrians became swamped by the number of allied missiles, the Russian army deployed its system for inhibiting the commands and controls of NATO, which paralysed most of their launchers.

The most that we know for certain is that a French plane was unable to fire one of its missiles, and was obliged to jettison it out to sea without triggering it [9], and that two French multi-mission frigates suffered a computer failure and were unable to fire their naval Cruise missiles [10] — these are symptoms that are well known by anyone who has had to face up to the Russian inhibitor weapon.